Just Hand the Trophy to Barcelona Now

Indications Are That La Liga Has Already Found This Season's Titleholder

By

Joshua Robinson

Nov. 26, 2012 5:30 p.m. ET

Real Madrid manager Jose Mourinho spent his Saturday night fuming at the referee who denied his side a clear penalty and the incorrect linesman who cost him a goal. If either one of those calls had gone in his favor, then he almost certainly wouldn't have left Real Betis's stadium with a 1-0 defeat, Madrid's third of the young season.

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And perhaps it would have made Sunday night a little easier on him, too.

Twenty-four hours later, Barcelona was parading around, knocking off milestones in yet another joyous rout, this one a 4-0 shellacking of sixth-place Levante.

Basking in its own glory, reinforcing its own faith in the Barcelona way, the Catalan club fielded 11 graduates of its famed youth academy at La Masia to match the best start ever by a La Liga side—12 wins and one draw.

More important, Barcelona stretched its lead over Real Madrid, the other contender in Spain's perennial two-horse race, to 11 points.

Now, barely a third of the way through the 38-game La Liga season, the race in Spain may already be over—no matter what the more diplomatic players have to say about it.

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Real Madrid's Cristiano Ronaldo
Getty Images

"The difference with Madrid is certainly not definitive," Barcelona defender Gerard Pique said after Sunday's game. "You can never count Real Madrid out."

The past five years suggest otherwise. Since 2007, Spain's leader after 13 games—inevitably Real or Barcelona—has gone on to lift the La Liga trophy five months later.

At this point last year, for instance, Real led by six points and went on to win by nine. The three seasons before that, it was Barcelona nosing ahead at the 13-game mark and you can guess what happened in each of those.

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Barcelona's Lionel Messi
Associated Press

Mourinho's analysis of the situation was more confounding than anything else, but he seemed to accept the possibility Saturday night that Barcelona could run away with the title—just as his own team threatened to do last spring when it led by as many as 13 points.

"Last season we had 10 more points than our opponents in March and then we drew twice and the situation became more complicated," he said, referring to Real's 2011-2012 run to the title. "Maybe at the end of the year we are 11, 13, nine, eight or 12 points behind. We are not going to be four, five or three points behind."

"But let's not be too optimistic or too pessimistic," Mourinho added.

Wherever Real ends up will depend heavily on whether it can turn around its form on the road where it has performed like a sputtering caricature of its normally fluid, freewheeling self.

Within the confines of the Bernabeu Stadium, Real is undefeated and has outscored opponents 20-3 in six games. Away from home, the club has lost three of its seven games, conceding more than twice as many goals.

Of course, Real was the last team to overcome a deficit after the unlucky 13th round of games, but the circumstances were friendlier then.

In 2006-2007, Real Madrid trailed Barcelona by a single point in December and finished the season level on points. Real only won the league on the strength of its head-to-head record.

Predictably, Barcelona manager Tito Vilanova insisted that the club wasn't clearing space in the trophy cabinet just yet.

"We still have 75 points left to play for and Atletico Madrid is only three points behind us," he said. "We have a long way to go."

Indeed, Real's crosstown rival is lurking in second place, though it probably doesn't have the depth to maintain a serious challenge into the spring.

Still, in the short term, Atletico could keep creating problems for Real as early as this weekend when the two clubs meet in the Bernabeu Stadium for the Madrid derby.

Although Real has won the last seven home games against its neighbor in red and white, Atletico is more dangerous than it has been in years.

Its biggest weapon, the Colombian striker Radamel Falcao, is one of only three players to have bagged 10 goals already in La Liga this year, joined only by Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo.

So with 25 games left to play and Barcelona showing no signs of slipping up any time soon, Mourinho could be forgiven for shifting his attention to more promising competitions, like the Champions League, where Real Madrid has booked its spot in the second round.

After all, that's what then-Barcelona manager Pep Guardiola chose to do last year when a late-season defeat in the Clasico left his side seven points adrift.

Mourinho, however, maintained that he could do no such thing, at least not now—Guardiola had made his decision in April, not November.

"It's complicated, but I can't focus on just one competition," Mourinho said. "It's impossible. I think from one match to the next and the next match is the Spanish Cup, then La Liga and then it's the Champions League.

"But at this point last season our fans were optimistic, it's understandable that now they are pessimistic and think we can't go on to win."

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